Only on The View would you hear a host compare the radically leftist mayor of New York City to “a Republican.” That happened on Wednesday’s show, when the hosts gave Bill De Blasio a tougher shake than most news programs do, but still praised his socialist health care plan that guarantees free health care for illegal aliens. That’s when Joy Behar weirdly praised the mayor’s plan as sounding like a “small government” idea by “a Republican.”

The show set the tone with the narrator leading into the interview by gushing about the mayor’s plan for “free health care” for “undocumented citizens.” Host Sunny Hostin changed that to “undocumented immigrants” when she introduced De Blasio, gushing that Trump was going to “learn” from New York how to run the country:

A lot of Democrats are calling for comprehensive health care for every American, and Mayor Bill De Blasio just announced he's making it happen for all new yorkers, including undocumented immigrants. He's here to tell us how he did it and what the White House can learn from it.

However, Hostin did press the politician on how to respond to his critics, asking, “But what do you say to people who say they don't want to pay for the undocumented?”

De Blasio stuck to the typical liberal lines of health care being a “universal right,” even claiming that his plan would save the city money because illegals wouldn’t have to go the emergency room as frequently to get their health care, and it would prevent everyone else from getting sick as well. Co-host Abby Huntsman stepped in to grill the mayor on how effective this plan was going to be:

“Are you concerned about abuse? None of these programs are perfect,” Huntsman began, referring to the city’s problem with homelessness. “If you have people flocking here, how do you pay for that?” she pressed. De Blasio denied this plan would incentivize more illegal aliens to flock to New York, actually, saying they would rather go somewhere “warmer.” Huntsman pointed out that the state’s population had grown almost 50% since 2007, but that didn’t deter his talking points. That’s when co-host Meghan McCain argued his plan could face the same problems of the Department of Veterans Affairs:

MCCAIN: Do you think the V.A. Is run well and it's a great medical organization?

DE BLASIO: No, of course not.

MCCAIN: That's a government run heath care.

DE BLASIO: That’s a federal run health care.

MCCAIN: By the way, veterans died waiting to get health care.

DE BLASIO: It's horrible, unconscionable. We're closer to the ground and we're accountable to our own people and our public health system is working better and better.

Joy Behar then absurdly compared the mayor's plan to small government. “You know what, you sound-like a Republican a little bit because they believe in small government and you're saying do it on the local level,” she gushed. “You’re starting to sound like a Republican!”

As the panel chuckled, McCain grumbled that wasn’t anything like small government, but De Blasio took that as a compliment, saying his plan was only a placeholder until the rest of the country got on board.

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg responded, “So, I like all of that. That all sounds good.” That was the end of the talk about his radical plan. Whoopi ended the show by complaining that she didn’t like the mayor’s addition of bike lanes and the traffic problems it caused.